Parliament met on Thursday, the Queen's Speech touching on the
Afghan war as the cause of the Session, and hardly referring to any- thing else. In the House of Lords, Lord Ravensworth, who once sat, as Mr. Liddell, and then as Lord Eslington, in the House of Com- mons, moved the Address, and made a great effort to justify the Afghan war, as a war " in " Afghanistan,—be laid great stress on the preposition,—and not" with " Afghanistan, only with Shere Ali, its ruler. But his speech was not happy, for like the Government he follows, he attempted to excuse Shere Ali for his alienation by throwing all the blame on the timid Government of Mr. Gladstone ; nay, he even went so far as to say that when at last Lord Lytton offered the Ameer what he might have ac- cepted, it was too late ; that the moment was past when it was reasonable to suppose that he could be convinced. Well, if so, we are actually going to war, not with a State, but with one man, who is, on Lord Ravensworth's own showing, morally in the right, or at. least, if in any degree in the wrong, highly excusable and pardonable; we are killing any number of Afghans, not because we do not love them, but because Mr. Gladstone's Government was cowardly enough not to do Shere Ali justice. That is a curious mode of justifying a personal war with Shere Ali. It might have justified a declaration of war on Mr. Gladstone.
